The Shadow of Ligny:
Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview:
Tuesday 13 June 1815
The Evidence In Wellington's Papers
by John Hussey, UK
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By late-May the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies together were vastly superior in numbers and guns to anything Napoleon could bring against them in Belgium.
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Officially, war had not been declared, which made for complications as this fiction placed a check on military reconnaissance. Spanish, Austrian, Russian armies, and another Prussian force on the middle Rhine, were being gathered or were already advancing towards France’s southern and eastern frontiers which, in contrast to the northern border, were only weakly defended by Imperial forces. A distracting royalist revolt was diverting Bonapartist forces to the Vendée. In one sense Napoleon had already left it too late, and that was the assumption upon which Allied planning was based. This did not totally rule out a Napoleonic foray into Belgium but encouraged the assumption that the Allied preponderance would limit the effect. (We also know that Wellington had an ingrained dislike of detailed planning for hypothetical contingencies as his remarks to the Prince of Orange in May 1815 and to Uxbridge immediately before Waterloo make plain. 16
Detailed proposals to rush troops at a future date to one place or another - such as Wagner and Damitz suggest - were not the Duke’s way.) Alternative scenarios were that Napoleon might (i) attempt to upset the approaching forces on the Rhine before they could combine, or (ii) stand on the defensive well inside France, relying on his fortress chain and the armed camp around Paris.
Since Lettow-Vorbeck has demonstrated that Gneisnau believed that the French would retreat south (9 June) and that any danger was ‘fast disappearing’ (12 June) it is unnecessary for an article on Pfuel’s mission to go back to intelligence reports at the start of June 1815. 17
But let us note as a control on what follows that Napoleon left Paris for the Armée du Nord at 4 a.m. on 12 June and was at Laon that night, reaching Avesnes on the 13th; and that his campaign plan was to move troops continually in order to confuse the Allies, prior to concentrating swiftly eastwards against Charleroi.
If we go back to 10 June we note that Wellington had received a (false) report that Napoleon had reached Maubeuge (only 12 miles due south of Mons in the Duke's sector) and had gone west to Lille (under 40 miles from the Duke's supply port of Ostend), while his Hanoverian outpost commander, Dörnberg, thought (wrongly) that Napoleon was already at Laon with 80,000 men. On the 11th Dörnberg heard that Napoleon had apparently been in Valenciennes (in the west) for five days and was now in Avesnes (both reports incorrect), while the Duke now thought that the Emperor had still been in Paris up to the 7th (not only was this information correct, but the Duke immediately passed it on to Müffling); however, Wellington was still concerned for the defences of Mons, the Condé canal and Tournai. 18
Dörnberg sent in a very full and accurate report on the 12th that a massive concentration was forming between Maubeuge and Mézières - a span of nearly 50 miles, however - with the Emperor expected at Avesnes, i.e. due south of Maubeuge (on the western flank), while other information suggested that the French would attack on the anniversary of Marengo [14 June]; the Duke was also occupied with delicate questions of integrating the Nassau troops in a way that should suit both him and the Dutch king.
On the 13th, the day of Pfuel’s visit, Wellington heard from Dörnberg that the Prussians had noted French units moving from the eastern sector westward towards Maubeuge and that ‘without doubt the whole army is concentrating near Maubeuge’ (‘whole army’ is incorrect) and from the Prince of Orange that French headquarters were at Avesnes (correct) and Napoleon daily expected (he was already there) while the Dutch reports again stressed the presence of troops at Valenciennes and Maubeuge. In addition to handling Nassau and French royalist matters , the details of subsidy terms for Baden and Württemberg and the financing of new defences for Ostend, the Duke wrote to his old friend Lyndoch:
There is nothing new here. We have reports of Buonaparte’s joining the army and attacking us; but I have accounts from Paris of the 10th, on which day he was still there; and I judge from his speech to the Legislature that his departure was not likely to be immediate. I think we are now too strong for him here. 19
Intelligence reports were not the only matters occupying Wellington when Pfuel came to see him. For on 2 June the Duke had written to the Allied supreme commander, Prince Schwarzenberg, still in central Germany, about the diversion of French troops to combat the Vendée rising and about plans and dates for the invasion of France by the combined Allies. The Russians had just reached the river Main and would continue towards the middle Rhine where Prussian reserves were already stationed, and the Austrians were expected to be on the upper Rhine around 16 June. The Duke thought that was the date when hostilities should begin on the Rhine and in Belgium. It was therefore time to consider routes for each army and the method of supply when invading France.
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Thus Wellington's thoughts at the date of the Pfuel meeting can be summarised as follows:
(ii) His information from Paris that Napoleon was still there on the 10th was correct and he had found that quite a number of the reports received from his own outposts of Napoleon's presence in the north had proved incorrect. He trusted his Parisian agents to give him sufficient notice of any threat.
(iii) He believed that with each succeeding day's calm his own heterogeneous army’s coherence improved (and that Prussian effectiveness did likewise) and that time therefore favoured the Anglo-Allied-Prussian forces.
(iv) Nonetheless he did not rule out some sort of surprise attack in the west by the French and he was concerned that the defences of western Belgium should be watched over and strengthened, and his supply port of Ostend made more secure.
(v) The (incorrect) report that the ‘whole’ French army was around Maubeuge might indicate another of the continual French movements to and fro, or it might be more serious, but either way Maubeuge was opposite the Anglo-Allied sector and not the Prussian.
(vi) Now that the Russians and Austrians were approaching France he sought that the invasion of France from Belgium and from the Middle and Upper Rhine should be coordinated, a date fixed, and the supporting logistics considered. It will be seen that this summary is in conformity with the business of the 13 June meeting as Lettow-Vorbeck described it. How does it compare with Müffling’s testimony?
The Shadow of Ligny: Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview Tuesday 13 June 1815
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I said earlier that ‘no English writer has drawn up an account of the meeting probably because the Duke himself never referred to it in his letters, despatches or memoranda’, but much of the context can be traced by sifting what the Duke did write on the events of June and the intentions of the Allies.